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All DECA’d Out

All DECA’d Out

Feb. 9, 2018

Keep four key terms – Deliverables, Exclusions, Constraints, and Assumptions – top of mind when talking to clients

By Paul Atherton, Business Coach, Breakthrough Academy

If you are like most trades’ sector entrepreneurs you have spent vital and unplanned time throughout your career addressing issues on jobs that were ultimately caused by a lack of planning or a gap in communication between yourself, your employees and your customers.

In order for your business to grow and become more efficient, it is crucial to adopt a mindset that embraces strategies that decrease time spent addressing unplanned job events. Your business must reach a place where you feel comfortable handing over control of a project to your capable staff, and you are confident that they will deliver a quality service to your customers.

Many entrepreneurs have a consistent method for carefully considering and calculating project components such as time and materials (if you don’t, visit RenoContractor.ca/TKTKTKKTK to download our standardized estimating system). However, many forget to consider project intangibles that have the ability to make or break the success of a job.

At Breakthrough Academy, we’ve worked with hundreds of fast growing and successful companies, and it’s become clear to us that the majority of problems that arise during a project can be avoided when a clear communication plan is developed for each project when planning for it. Every communication plan should outline a system that ensures that the right conversations will happen during the initial meeting(s) with a client, and that staff are clear on how to execute the project at a high level of quality.

There are four key elements of a communication plan that should be established and can be categorized using the following acronym: DECA – Deliverables, Exclusions, Constraints, Assumptions.

Deliverables

Deliverables are often all that we really think about when planning a job. These are found by tallying up a list of all the tasks necessary to fill a customer’s needs. Once this list is built we then have a baseline for attributing a charge for each item along with exemptions for changes in scope or any contractual issues that might arise.

Exclusions

Always talk to your customers about what’s not included. Project exclusions are rarely talked about until a project is well underway and the customer asks things like:

“How come your company can’t manage organizing delivery of all the material that my wife and I supplied for this project?”

“Isn’t the shed also included in the price? I pointed right at it when you were here going through all costs.”

“Why are you charging me a project management fee on top of the work associated with this change order?”

We need to explicitly state what is out of scope for the project. This will help manage customer expectations.

Constraints

All job activities are affected by limiting factors called constraints. Project constraints are defined by internal or external restrictions that usually revolve around the budget or schedule. These constraints are imposed by the contractor and client during the initial stages of a job when a bid is being reviewed or a contract is being negotiated. Some common examples of project constraints are:

Ensuring a job’s profit margins can be maintained. Never agree to take on a job or sign a change order without knowing that your company’s bottom line will be met.

Ensuring project schedule milestones meet customer requirements (say, a patio upgrade needs to be complete before a family wedding).

Ensuring project schedule milestones meet your company’s internal capabilities. We should never make commitments that require our staff to be in three places at once.

There is a bandwidth of constraints that all jobs should move within for your company to achieve its goals. How well we can control the upper and lower limits of that bandwidth will determine the level of success your company will reach.

Assumptions

You might have a client who watches a lot of HGTV or has familiarity working with a much smaller or much larger company. Their past experiences will cause them to have certain expectations or assumptions which might be different from the services you can provide. Here are some examples:

A customer assumes that you will be onsite with your crew for the entire duration of the job.

A customer assumes that you will coordinate use of their building’s freight elevator with the doorman.

A sub-contractor assumes they can discuss work scope additions with the client in your absence.

An assumption can be defined as a factor that is perceived to be certain, true, or real without any demonstration or proof. If accuracy of an assumption has a colossal effect on your company’s performance then this assumption should be brought to light and documented.

Transparency is key to running a successful job, managing customer expectations, and maintaining visibility as a successful entrepreneur in your industry. Always remember to go through DECA whenever you are planning out a job or gathering information to perform a service. High fences make good neighbours so ensure that everything discussed with your customer is clearly outlined in job documentation such as contracts or quotations.

The level of detail to which the communication plan defines the work will help determine how well your company can execute a job and manage the expectations of your customers, so remember to discuss and document each of the four DECA components in detail when planning your next project. Make sure you download our standardized estimating system with DECA inclusions to get started.

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Customers may not feel comfortable asking you for discretion, but they always appreciate it.

Did you ever have a potential customer who should have been excited about doing business with you but seemed reserved?
It happened in a weird way for me. The senior managers seated around the boardroom table were excited that their new technology would disrupt their market and separate them from every competitor. They had brought me in to help craft their sales message and to eventually train their reps on how to introduce it to their customers.
Along with their excitement, though, I sensed some tension. So after I was introduced, my first remark was: "I know this goes without saying. I just want it known for the record that everything we discuss here will be treated by me as confidential."
I immediately noticed this huge look of relief on the face of the CEO. From that point on, things went just fine.
Customers may not feel comfortable asking you for discretion, but they always appreciate it. Unfortunately, in today's world of social media, coffee shops used as offices and cellphones that record anything anywhere, confidentiality seems to be backsliding into a state of dangerous decline. That's why you can gain tremendous trust with customers by simply following these five unwritten rules of customer confidentiality. Ignore them at your peril.
Rule #1: Know that you are in a position of trust: We've all heard of doctor/patient confidentiality and lawyer/client privilege. Doctors and lawyers are sworn to secrecy about their customers' affairs for good reason. Your customers deserve the same discretion from you. When you talk to others about your customers, assume that the customer is in the room with you, or will read everything you post or write about them. If what you're sharing isn't complimentary and publically known, then keep it to yourself.
Rule #2: Starbucks isn't a confession booth: I once hired a consultant who was based in another city to do some work on our website. We scheduled a conversation about my brand and target market. To my dismay, he logs into the call from a coffee shop. Throughout our conversation, I'm seeing customers come and go in the background. Not only was it distracting, it felt like a violation of my privacy as a client. There are good reasons why lawyers and accountants won't host you in their office. Instead, meetings are held in a private room. One reason is that you shouldn't see confidential files lying on their desk from other clients. Another reason is so your meeting will not be seen or overheard by others. Coffee shops are for casual coffee, not for doing business.
Rule #3: There's a difference between small talk and prying: Ever have this happen to you in a restaurant while you're paying for the meal: the server is standing by your table waiting for you to input your credit card PIN on the portable device and asks, "So what are your plans for the rest of the day (evening, weekend, whatever)?" Pardon? When did our relationship as patron/server evolve to the intimacy of me needing to share my weekend plans? The key to making small talk sound natural and appropriate is context and relevance. Unless you've been chatting about weekend plans with that person, better to stick to safe topics like the weather.
Rule #4: Yes, your cellphone conversation is annoying: People who talk at length on cellphones around other people sound like jackasses. Seriously. It reflects a total lack of self-awareness and distain for basic civility. It also tells people around them they don't respect the privacy of the person on the other end of the phone. They're damaging their own reputation and are too oblivious to realize it. Don't be one of them. Move to a quiet area and lower your voice.
Rule #5: Strong feelings don't necessitate expressing them: This is perhaps the most important confidentiality lesson at work and in life. We can't unsay, unpost, or unTweet our opinions and observations. No doubt you can think of numerous examples at work and in the news where a little discretion and self-restraint would have saved significant fallout. While it's tempting to be drawn into adding our two cents to a discussion, perhaps the greatest contribution we can make to the relationship is remaining silent. We hope in turn that when we say or do something less than brilliant, others won't share it with the world. Ironically, kindness and maturity are often best reflected — and trust is sometimes most strongly earned — by simply shutting up.

Jeff Mowatt is a customer service strategist and speaker based in Calgary. This article is based on his bestselling book, Influence with Ease.

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Customers may not feel comfortable asking you for discretion, but they always appreciate it.

Did you ever have a potential customer who should have been excited about doing business with you but seemed reserved?
It happened in a weird way for me. The senior managers seated around the boardroom table were excited that their new technology would disrupt their market and separate them from every competitor. They had brought me in to help craft their sales message and to eventually train their reps on how to introduce it to their customers.
Along with their excitement, though, I sensed some tension. So after I was introduced, my first remark was: "I know this goes without saying. I just want it known for the record that everything we discuss here will be treated by me as confidential."
I immediately noticed this huge look of relief on the face of the CEO. From that point on, things went just fine.
Customers may not feel comfortable asking you for discretion, but they always appreciate it. Unfortunately, in today's world of social media, coffee shops used as offices and cellphones that record anything anywhere, confidentiality seems to be backsliding into a state of dangerous decline. That's why you can gain tremendous trust with customers by simply following these five unwritten rules of customer confidentiality. Ignore them at your peril.
Rule #1: Know that you are in a position of trust: We've all heard of doctor/patient confidentiality and lawyer/client privilege. Doctors and lawyers are sworn to secrecy about their customers' affairs for good reason. Your customers deserve the same discretion from you. When you talk to others about your customers, assume that the customer is in the room with you, or will read everything you post or write about them. If what you're sharing isn't complimentary and publically known, then keep it to yourself.
Rule #2: Starbucks isn't a confession booth: I once hired a consultant who was based in another city to do some work on our website. We scheduled a conversation about my brand and target market. To my dismay, he logs into the call from a coffee shop. Throughout our conversation, I'm seeing customers come and go in the background. Not only was it distracting, it felt like a violation of my privacy as a client. There are good reasons why lawyers and accountants won't host you in their office. Instead, meetings are held in a private room. One reason is that you shouldn't see confidential files lying on their desk from other clients. Another reason is so your meeting will not be seen or overheard by others. Coffee shops are for casual coffee, not for doing business.
Rule #3: There's a difference between small talk and prying: Ever have this happen to you in a restaurant while you're paying for the meal: the server is standing by your table waiting for you to input your credit card PIN on the portable device and asks, "So what are your plans for the rest of the day (evening, weekend, whatever)?" Pardon? When did our relationship as patron/server evolve to the intimacy of me needing to share my weekend plans? The key to making small talk sound natural and appropriate is context and relevance. Unless you've been chatting about weekend plans with that person, better to stick to safe topics like the weather.
Rule #4: Yes, your cellphone conversation is annoying: People who talk at length on cellphones around other people sound like jackasses. Seriously. It reflects a total lack of self-awareness and distain for basic civility. It also tells people around them they don't respect the privacy of the person on the other end of the phone. They're damaging their own reputation and are too oblivious to realize it. Don't be one of them. Move to a quiet area and lower your voice.
Rule #5: Strong feelings don't necessitate expressing them: This is perhaps the most important confidentiality lesson at work and in life. We can't unsay, unpost, or unTweet our opinions and observations. No doubt you can think of numerous examples at work and in the news where a little discretion and self-restraint would have saved significant fallout. While it's tempting to be drawn into adding our two cents to a discussion, perhaps the greatest contribution we can make to the relationship is remaining silent. We hope in turn that when we say or do something less than brilliant, others won't share it with the world. Ironically, kindness and maturity are often best reflected — and trust is sometimes most strongly earned — by simply shutting up.

Jeff Mowatt is a customer service strategist and speaker based in Calgary. This article is based on his bestselling book, Influence with Ease.

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